Charley Trujillo was born in Hanford, California and was raised in Corcoran until he was 18 years old. His paternal grandparents emigrated from Silao Guanajuato, Mexico, to the United States in 1908. His maternal family has been in Texas before it became part of the U.S. in 1848. His father is a World War II veteran.
Two weeks after graduating from high school, Trujillo enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served in Germany as an infantryman in 1969. From there he volunteered for Vietnam. He served there as a sergeant in the infantry, earning both a Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal. He received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and his M.A. from San Jose State University. He has taught college courses in ethnic and Chicano studies, and the Vietnam War, and is the publisher of Chusma House Publications, one of the country's few independent Chicano publishing houses. His book "Soldados: Chicanos in Viet Nam" won the 1991 American Book Award. He is also the author of the novel "Dogs from Illusion." He lives in San Jose, California.
Fresh out of film school at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Sonya Rhee was doing research on Japanese-American soldiers in Vietnam when she spotted Trujillo's book at a local bookstore. The young Korean filmmaker was so taken with Trujillo's experience that she contacted him and went to Callifornia to meet him. Trujillo agreed to work with her and she changed the subject of her documentary to Soldados: Chicanos in Viet Nam.
She has worked at several international film festivals, including the Edinburgh and Hamptons film festivals. She served as festival coordinator for the 2002 MediaRights.org's Media That Matters Festival, co-presented with the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. She is also a member of The Workshop, a New York-based group of Asian American filmmakers. Rhee lives in New York City.